


Understanding

by Derin



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Animorphs Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crayak negotiates with Ellimist after the events of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

I wait for Him in the heart of a neutron star.

I had arrived early, because I was feeling philosophical and wanted some time to myself. I’d dispatched my normal spokesperson on some mission on Leera that nobody cared about, because his voice annoyed me, so I was alone in a world of pressure and brilliance. On a submaterial level, two strands of state existences drifted dangerously close to each other. I already knew they wouldn’t touch of their own accord, but I could reach out and twist them together; I could blow up the star and the three planets within the blast radius.

You don’t truly know something until you know how to take it apart. There were a lot of things I could take apart, including that star. But to annihilate something on a mere physical level is primitive and crude. It proved that I knew how basic chemistry worked, it demonstrated a little submaterial physics. So what?

Every whole may be exactly the sum of its parts, but a whole was generally more complicated than the mere information it took t disassemble its parts. Pretty explosions and temporal dissociations were for children. No, I’d long ago started understanding things on higher levels. Started taking them apart on higher levels. To take down a society with fire showed a knowledge of physics. To take down a society by planting misunderstanding between their people via a series of predicted reactions, so that they set their own society on fire, that took an understanding of how the people worked, both individually and as a group. To find another unrelated society and convince them to set a society on fire…

The goal, of course, was to be strong enough that nothing could take one apart. To understand the multiverse and all its forms in such intimate detail that one was unstoppable, unbeatable. Perfect. It’s an isolating goal, but a noble one. The multiverse deserves perfection. I took on the spokesperson, imperfect though he was, to help fight the isolation, and I admit there have been times when I’ve taken the threads of his existence and seriously considered annihilating him, just because I could. Because that is the meaning of true power. I haven’t been tempted to do that much in recent times, though.

Not since I met Him.

The test of whether you understand something is whether you can take it neatly apart. Sometimes, I thought I understood something, and I didn’t. I failed. But even before I tried with Him, I knew he was special. A force to be reckoned with; not a pawn, an equal. So of course, I took Him apart.

And He became _stronger_.

He took me apart; I became stronger. We fought, and tore pieces from each other; I took what He was attached to, He took threads of space and time from my grasp. I knew then that He was the key, He would teach me even greater levels of understanding.

So we began the Game.

It was a rigged Game, from the start. I will win. We both know this. We know this because it is the only possible way for the Game to end. For as long as this multiverse brims with life, the Game is still continuing. I expected him to take the only move approximating a win; to throw as many of the creatures he had taken stewardship of as possible into the same conditions that formed us in an attempt to bring a small minority of them beyond my reach. Instead, He left them as they were, and He continues to do so. He won’t sacrifice the many to try to preserve a few. Instead, He fights to extend their lives as they are, knowing the inevitability of their extinction.

I don’t understand this conscious, deliberate acceptance of defeat. And I feel that understanding that is the key to taking Him apart.

We move in lockstep, Him and I. He creates, I destroy. Random creation paired with specific destruction; a system that nature figured out long before either of us were ever born. But we do it better, smarter. Natures blundering produces shifting, messy variety. Our designs will produce perfection.

By taking apart His work, I understand Him better. But by protecting against mine, I fear that He understands me better. It is a race, in a way; in order to both learn and protect my own mind from Him, I often resort to imitation. I let Him develop the strategy, then I exploit it. To take a strategy apart is to understand it.

He created a species of joyful, playful beings to carry out His work; I created one to carry out mine. When they met, mine won. But for a handful of robots hiding on some planet nobody cared about. I had defeated Him at that strategy.

He worked by spreading life throughout the universe, trying to outrun me; I tried that, too. I used a little species of mind-controlling slug and waited for it to be released on the universe, spreading and colonising, trying to outrun a force bent on exterminating it. I forced the pursuing force – a species He had been integral in the evolution of! – onto new planets, and _they_ killed while _mine_ spread. I used His strategy of creation to spread destruction, and I beat Him at that strategy, too.

Until…

Until they found that one planet, the one where His robot refugees had landed. And He used a handful of immature natives to fight my invaders to a standstill. He pulled His robots back in. Pacifists – pacifists! – and primitive children. He used them to kill the very force I’d modelled on His precious life-spreaders. At every turn, He used the dregs of previous defeats to block me, to stop me.

This is not the first time.

Sometimes, I’m not sure that He and I are playing the same Game. Because if He is playing my Game, He is losing almost every objective. And somehow, despite this, He is pulling ahead.

I will learn what He is doing, how He is playing. I will understand it, and I will take it apart.

I twist a strand of spacetime and pull myself forward, to out proposed meeting time. It is fortunate that the life of a neutron star is so long, and it still exists at the point in time we had decided to meet. I witness Him resolve before me even as I resolve at the designated time, and release the thread. He wears the little blueish form that he wears for his child soldiers. A silent mockery.

“So,” He says.

“So,” I agree. “You sacrificed a pawn. I wasn’t certain that you would.”

He shrugs, and projects the equivalent emotional effect, presumably in case I don’t know what that expression means. But I, too, have watched the people of that planet. “There was little I could do,” He admits. “It was her choice to make.”

“It seems that her cousin made it for her.”

“He didn’t. It was his plan, but she chose to be there. She chose to be commanded by him. Even if he didn’t order it of her, if the situation was such that it would help, that it would make a difference, she would still be there.” He looks at me carefully, although sight is of course impossible I our current environment. “Do you still want him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s no threat to you any more.”

Let Him think I want revenge. Let Him think I would gain pleasure from such a base form of achievement. Let Him misunderstand me.

The boy’s life and death was no longer relevant to my plans. But I wanted to see how he’d done it. I wanted to see how he’d taken a group of primitive people with no real power and fought the yeerk empire to a standstill, crushed them between his forces and the approaching andalites, and then snatched victory in time to stop the incineration of his planet that I’d so been looking forward to. I had thought I had planned that perfectly. And he and his team had stopped me.

“I don’t care. I still want him. You took the girl from me, so I will take the boy from you.”

“Then let us discuss the fate of the escaped ship.”

“The esc… you want the remains of the yeerk empire? Why?”

“That’s my business.”

“No.” I don’t know what He wants with the dregs of the battle, but he was too good at turning such leftovers against me.

“I won’t touch the ship if you don’t touch the Animorphs. Including Jake.”

It was possible that He had no interest in the ship, and wanted to keep using the children. “Neither of us touch the ship, or the remaining Animorphs.”

“Done. Now, Leera’s new space travel technology…”

I quickly pull the relevant information from the sub-ether. The mostly-aquatic people in question had never had much interest in space travel, until the yeerks had seen their use as hosts and descended upon them. But with an extraterrestrial attack to motivate them and their mind-reading abilities allowing them to effectively garner technology from whatever species happened to encounter them…

Only now do I realise. Hork-bajir. Taxxons. Nahara. Leerans. Humans.

“You did this,” I hiss.

He frowns at me, confused. Naturally, He has no idea what in particular I am accusing him of. He does a lot of things. “Sorry?”

“Nothing. You were saying?”

“Leeran space travel technology. A slight twist in temporal calibration for their first demonstration jump would put them…” He projects a map to show me where He wants to put the Leeran explorers.

Leerans in space. Every species the yeerks had touched in their conquest – in my conquest – now in space, communicating, negotiating, exploring… generations before they would discover such a thing on their own. Spreading themselves, spreading life, advancing. Even if I had incinerated the Earth, they would still be there. If I had successfully conquered the Earth, the problem would be even worse.

A side effect of my plans. A jump-start to so many species, and He hadn’t paid a thing for it – I had! I had bought it along with the progression of the yeerk empire!

I analyse the map carefully, trying to decide exactly how much I could ask for the concession without revealing the details of my own plans.

Someday, I will learn how He does it. And I will grow stronger for the experience.

And then, I will take it apart.


End file.
